How many words (on average) do you write for exam answer? Forum

[rayiner]

You're all gonna be below median. HTH.

[1474292940502124]

You're all gonna be below median. HTH.

Your school has instituted a policy whereby if you are below bottom 25%, you are auto-transferred to Cooley (with no scholly). Let us know how that is next year.

[chadwick218]

I hit 9,000 words for a 3 hour civ pro exam. Otherwise, I was typically around 5,500 words for every 3 hour exam. Our criminal law exam was capped at 4,000 words which required me to frantically cut 250 words in the final 10 minutes.

[rbgrocio]

I wrote 9600 for my torts final. It was one very long essay.

I wrote about 17,000 for my contracts final. It had four essays. The first one you were supposed to take 45 mins to answers, the second one 30 mins, the third one 10 mins and the last one 75 mins. WE also had 40 multiple choice questions. The last essay was a hypothetical where, if you spotted every issue, you had to say pretty much all you knew about contracts. My friend wrote more than 15,000, and a lot of people were about the same.

[Grad_Student]

I wrote 9600 for my torts final. It was one very long essay.

I wrote about 17,000 for my contracts final. It had four essays. The first one you were supposed to take 45 mins to answers, the second one 30 mins, the third one 10 mins and the last one 75 mins. WE also had 40 multiple choice questions. The last essay was a hypothetical where, if you spotted every issue, you had to say pretty much all you knew about contracts. My friend wrote more than 15,000, and a lot of people were about the same.

I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. For a 160 minute exam, as you stated, to type 17,000 words you would have to be typing at an average of 106 words per minute not including going back and checking mistakes. Not saying impossible but I don't believe it.

[pandacot]

I wrote 9600 for my torts final. It was one very long essay.

I wrote about 17,000 for my contracts final. It had four essays. The first one you were supposed to take 45 mins to answers, the second one 30 mins, the third one 10 mins and the last one 75 mins. WE also had 40 multiple choice questions. The last essay was a hypothetical where, if you spotted every issue, you had to say pretty much all you knew about contracts. My friend wrote more than 15,000, and a lot of people were about the same.

We had two essays -- a half hour and a 1 or 1.5 hour essay. The half hour essays were limited to 650 words (bar style essays), and the hour was limited to 800 - 1500 words depending on the class. There was only one class that had no limit. I actually enjoyed the limits because limits made me edit and really think about what is and is not important.

[Mal]

I wrote 9600 for my torts final. It was one very long essay.

I wrote about 17,000 for my contracts final. It had four essays. The first one you were supposed to take 45 mins to answers, the second one 30 mins, the third one 10 mins and the last one 75 mins. WE also had 40 multiple choice questions. The last essay was a hypothetical where, if you spotted every issue, you had to say pretty much all you knew about contracts. My friend wrote more than 15,000, and a lot of people were about the same.

I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. For a 160 minute exam, as you stated, to type 17,000 words you would have to be typing at an average of 106 words per minute not including going back and checking mistakes. Not saying impossible but I don't believe it.

Agreed, thats not even excluding time that is required to read the exam or think about it.

Anyways my school has full year courses, so I had mostly 1 or 2 hour midterms. I wrote 2200-3000 words on each hour one, 4000ish on the 2 hour ones. We'll see how well I did...

[YCrevolution]

Also, in the strictest sense, a standardized "word" is 5 keystrokes (including space and punctuation). Using that method, I can usually gain 20% to 35% improvement in my WPM versus a word count that only counts actual words, regardless of the length of the words. Even using that calculation method though, 100+ wpm is something only very advanced typists can achieve, and that's not when they have to read and formulate an answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

[mallard]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

[vanwinkle]

Agreed, thats not even excluding time that is required to read the exam or think about it.

Anyways my school has full year courses, so I had mostly 1 or 2 hour midterms. I wrote 2200-3000 words on each hour one, 4000ish on the 2 hour ones. We'll see how well I did...

Mal, from the Latin, meaning "bad"?

[Grad_Student]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

That is true, but even still with 4500 words, you are looking at 30k characters which is much higher than 17k.

[Mal]

Agreed, thats not even excluding time that is required to read the exam or think about it.

Anyways my school has full year courses, so I had mostly 1 or 2 hour midterms. I wrote 2200-3000 words on each hour one, 4000ish on the 2 hour ones. We'll see how well I did...

Mal, from the Latin, meaning "bad"?

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003809/

[prezidentv8]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

Haha oh that would just make too much sense.

[vanwinkle]

Agreed, thats not even excluding time that is required to read the exam or think about it.

Anyways my school has full year courses, so I had mostly 1 or 2 hour midterms. I wrote 2200-3000 words on each hour one, 4000ish on the 2 hour ones. We'll see how well I did...

Mal, from the Latin, meaning "bad"?

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003809/

http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/MalcolmReynolds

[Leeroy Jenkins]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

That is true, but even still with 4500 words, you are looking at 30k characters which is much higher than 17k.

but 17k chars = 3400 words, which is much more believable for a 3hr exam than five times that amount.

[vanwinkle]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

That is true, but even still with 4500 words, you are looking at 30k characters which is much higher than 17k.

but 17k chars = 3400 words, which is much more believable for a 3hr exam than five times that amount.

This is probably what it is for people with the insane "17,000 word" stuff. I've been giving actual word count (according to MS Word, since here we use MS Word to do our final exams).

[ihatelaw]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

That is true, but even still with 4500 words, you are looking at 30k characters which is much higher than 17k.

but 17k chars = 3400 words, which is much more believable for a 3hr exam than five times that amount.

with the exception of contracts, 3400 words seems like way too few words. i actually think that isn't a very believable number. i dont believe anyone wrote 15000 words on a 3 hour exam, but ill buy into 8000 - 9000.

[excelsiorcaelo]

My guess is some people are counting characters, not words!

That is true, but even still with 4500 words, you are looking at 30k characters which is much higher than 17k.

but 17k chars = 3400 words, which is much more believable for a 3hr exam than five times that amount.

with the exception of contracts, 3400 words seems like way too few words. i actually think that isn't a very believable number. i dont believe anyone wrote 15000 words on a 3 hour exam, but ill buy into 8000 - 9000.

As far as I have been able to discern, 3000-4000 has been typical of 3-hour exams at HLS. I can't imagine writing a 9000-word exam without a massive amount of unnecessary word vomit and/or writing anecdotes and hypothetical analogies to take up more wordspace.

[ihatelaw]

Are you a law student?

As far as I have been able to discern, 3000-4000 has been typical of 3-hour exams at HLS. I can't imagine writing a 9000-word exam without a massive amount of unnecessary word vomit and/or writing anecdotes and hypothetical analogies to take up more wordspace.

Yes, I am a law student. I never said 9000 was the norm, it seems pretty excessive. I was near 7000 on two exams, and around 4500 on 1. from what i gathered, i was at the median of words used on an exam.

[excelsiorcaelo]

Are you a law student?

As far as I have been able to discern, 3000-4000 has been typical of 3-hour exams at HLS. I can't imagine writing a 9000-word exam without a massive amount of unnecessary word vomit and/or writing anecdotes and hypothetical analogies to take up more wordspace.

Yes, I am a law student. I never said 9000 was the norm, it seems pretty excessive. I was near 7000 on two exams, and around 4500 on 1. from what i gathered, i was at the median of words used on an exam.

Sorry--rereading your post, I realized that you were most likely a law student, after all.

Much of it probably depends on how the professor structures the question(s) in a given exam. Some fact patterns are simply limited in scope and won't allow you to invoke every maxim from the subject that you can remember.

[RVP11]

Are you a law student?

As far as I have been able to discern, 3000-4000 has been typical of 3-hour exams at HLS. I can't imagine writing a 9000-word exam without a massive amount of unnecessary word vomit and/or writing anecdotes and hypothetical analogies to take up more wordspace.

Yes, I am a law student. I never said 9000 was the norm, it seems pretty excessive. I was near 7000 on two exams, and around 4500 on 1. from what i gathered, i was at the median of words used on an exam.

Sorry--rereading your post, I realized that you were most likely a law student, after all.

Much of it probably depends on how the professor structures the question(s) in a given exam. Some fact patterns are simply limited in scope and won't allow you to invoke every maxim from the subject that you can remember.

TIC. Only my Ks professor gave what seemed to be a "discuss all possible issues" type of exam, and even then he wanted us to be as concise and brief as possible. On my Crim, Torts, or CivPro exam, anything over 6000 words would necessarily include irrelevant issues and probably annoy the professor reading it.

[rayiner]

I wrote 9600 for my torts final. It was one very long essay.

I wrote about 17,000 for my contracts final. It had four essays. The first one you were supposed to take 45 mins to answers, the second one 30 mins, the third one 10 mins and the last one 75 mins. WE also had 40 multiple choice questions. The last essay was a hypothetical where, if you spotted every issue, you had to say pretty much all you knew about contracts. My friend wrote more than 15,000, and a lot of people were about the same.

I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. For a 160 minute exam, as you stated, to type 17,000 words you would have to be typing at an average of 106 words per minute not including going back and checking mistakes. Not saying impossible but I don't believe it.

YHBT. HTH. HAND.

[pshak56]

I hit 5500 for torts and 4500 for Ks, seemed to be in the normal range...

[BobSacamano]

I was probably between 3000 and 5000 on all my exams, all three hours. I do not know how it's possible to hit 9000 words on a three-hour exam. Do you not read the question or outline? I would guess that this is where your average TLSer is not your average law student.

[rayiner]

don't forget the "acting in good faith" requirement in contracts--that's always worth extra word count and it can be applied to just about any hypo if you think hard enough about it

If the fact pattern doesn't even give you an inkling that anything is being done in bad faith, you're unlikely to get any points for bringing it up. On all my exams, there was plenty of stuff to talk about for the allotted time without veering away from issues that were clearly brought up in the fact pattern.